Category: Social Policy

Members of the Project 21 black leadership network are hitting back against President Barack Obama’s use of the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act to divide Americans from one another and to promote a political agenda.

The Voting Rights Act anniversary is a time for celebration, say Project 21 members, who say it was inappropriate for the President to use his speech noting the occasion to falsely accuse his political rivals of “deliberately making it harder for people to vote” and of intentionally passing “laws that aim at disenfranchising our fellow citizens.”

In fact, the Project 21 members say, efforts to reduce voter fraud protect the votes of eligible voters from being cancelled out by fraudulent votes, and no less a body than the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality, and arguably even the wisdom, of requiring IDs to vote.

The President claims identity-based voter fraud flat-out “doesn’t happen” – a claim belied by a consistent stream of voter fraud arrests and convictions nationally. (Websites archiving news stories about voter fraud can be found here and here.)

“President Obama has been in Chicago way too long if he thinks there is no corruption in Chicago or Illinois politics,” said Project 21 founding member Bishop Council Nedd II, Ph.D., Bishop and Rector of St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Pine Grove Mills, PA. Furthermore, Bishop Nedd says, “President Obama is wrong and lying when he claims that too many states are making it too difficult for people to vote. There is no correlation between people being denied the opportunity to vote based on race, and people showing proof of identity as a way of protecting this process and right.”

Indeed, Project 21 members say, the Voting Rights Act was never intended to be used to prohibit commonsense anti-fraud measures.

“The purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to guarantee that all Americans — black or white — living in a given jurisdiction had a say in the selection of elected officials, and thereby influence over the laws and the policies that they are governed by. In other words, the VRA ensured self-government occurred all across the country. The VRA was never about guaranteeing a certain number of seats in the legislature or on the city council,” said Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper, an attorney and voting rights expert.

“Unfortunately, rather than celebrate these achievements, the White House has chosen to deny these accomplishments and to distort the purposes of the VRA,” Cooper continued. “Focusing more on quotas and racial outcomes, the administration counters the very history and rationale of the VRA. In particular, the President’s singular attack on voter ID, a critical tool for ensuring that bona fide Americans vote in U.S. elections, contradicts the history and consensus regarding the VRA.”

“Maybe President Obama should convene a summit of Americans without valid identification and invite them to the White House for a meeting with him,” added Bishop Nedd, who notes that a lack of ID is actually a humanitarian issue that goes far beyond voting, as IDs are needed to open a bank account, apply for jobs, student loans and/or public assistance, to fly anywhere for job interviews or work, or even to visit the President in the White House. Since the White House is not working to eliminate the need for IDs to participate fully in the economy or to visit our public servants, Bishop Nedd says, the President’s priority should be to make certain every citizen has an ID, not simply to make sure IDs are not needed to vote.

The Project 21 members also wonder why the President seems reluctant to acknowledge that huge progress has been made over the last 50 years.

“In the 50 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, America has seen a sea-change in attitudes and opportunity for citizens of all races and backgrounds,” said Horace Cooper. “Today blacks and other minorities have unprecedented ballot access that our grandparents could only have dreamed about. We’ve seen the election of the first President of color elected, along with numerous Senators, Governors and Mayors across the land.”

Furthermore, Cooper says, “During the last two election cycles several states set records for black voter participation — often exceeding the turnout levels for the general population in the process.”

Much has changed, says Bishop Nedd. “My grandfather, who was born in Maysville, South Carolina and died in 1964, never cast a vote in an election his entire life. This happened for a variety of reasons, including the fact that he was not permitted to vote, was discouraged from voting, saw the consequences of attempting to vote and, finally, became used to not voting.”

That’s wrong, but it couldn’t happen today. As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, our leaders should join us in celebrating that important fact.

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over two decades, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org). The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank.

The legislation, which would ban federal grants and Medicaid reimbursement payments to Planned Parenthood, but keep overall funding levels for womens’ health care services the same, will be voted upon in the U.S. Senate at approximately 5:30 PM on Monday, August 3.(1)

Project 21 members say:

* Dr. Day Gardner: It is mind-boggling that American taxpayers are forced to pay more than $500 million to Planned Parenthood

“Planned Parenthood is a billion-dollar-a-year organization that makes most of its blood money by killing children by way of abortion. It is mind-boggling that American taxpayers are ‘forced’ to pay more than $500 million to an organization that kills unborn children in the most gruesome and brutal ways possible, and then deals in selling their lungs, heart and liver and other body parts for profit.

“What does Planned Parenthood do with the money? There is the obvious, of course: Planned Parenthood’s CEO makes more than half a million dollars a year. They also pay high salaries to abortionists who fly from abortion mill to abortion mill, killing children.

“You may have heard that Planned Parenthood does ‘cancer screenings.’
What that means is the same type of breast exam that every woman can do herself at home. They do not do mammograms.

“They also say their funding provides for contraception, treatment and tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and other women’s health services. First of all, what are ‘other women’s health services’? Secondly, aren’t all those things supposed to be covered by ObamaCare?” – Dr. Day Gardner, Project 21 member, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union and an executive member of the Washington, D.C.-based National Clergy Council.

* Joe R. Hicks: Why is this heinous organization still being subsidized by federal tax dollars?

“Only heartless or hopelessly ideologically-blinded leftist political partisans were unaffected by the horrific video clips of Planned Parenthood operatives coldly discussing the lurid details of dismembered aborted babies. However, the question must now be – why is this heinous organization still being subsidized by federal tax dollars? Planned Parenthood, a billion-dollar so-called ‘non-profit,’ performs 300,000 abortions each and every week, yet describes itself as a ‘women’s health care group.’ Are they really? They claim to provide valuable health services, like mammograms, yet is has been discovered that they do no such thing. They ‘refer’ women to health clinics that do provide this service. Planned Parenthood argues that ‘research,’ performed on crushed and dismembered aborted babies, has advanced stem cell cures, yet cannot provide independent data to show this is the case. What’s clear is that they perform abortions, subsidized by tax dollars. Congress must act now.” – Mr. Joe R. Hicks, Project 21 member and vice president of Community Advocates, Inc. in Los Angeles.

* Bishop Council Nedd: If there’s a constitutional right to a lifestyle, why isn’t there a constitutional right to life?

“Last week, a friend of mine who is a bishop and constitutional lawyer, remarked, ‘If there’s a constitutional right to a lifestyle, why isn’t there a constitutional right to life?’ So, the question in my mind is, why are the taxpayers subsidizing the murder of innocents in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution?

“Planned Parenthood received $500 million in taxpayer dollars last year. If we are now so enlightened that the courts are now signing off on protecting lifestyles, protecting lives would theoretically give the courts more lifestyles to protect. However, it is sadly still the case that the lives that the courts are abandoning to the social engineering of the elite and enlightened are the least of those among us. To protect the most vulnerable, Congress should pass a law that bars Medicaid from reimbursing its clinics for patient visits.” – Bishop Council Nedd II, founding member of Project 21, rector of St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Pine Grove Mills, PA and author of the books Does America Hate God? Faith Under Fire (2015) and The Final Four: A Scriptural Journey Through Advent (2013).

“The defense of Planned Parenthood by the media and politicians is disheartening. New videos released this week by the Center for Medical Progress provide evidence that doctors and executives working for Planned Parenthood may have committed gruesome crimes that make Dr. Gosnell’s clinic of horrors look tame. Each new video reveals more damning information including video of the Chief Medical Director of the Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood negotiating for the sale of baby body parts. This comes right on the heels of news that the Alliance Defense Fund has filed a criminal complaint after learning that a 13-year-old girl was brought in for an abortion by her rapist/sexual predator and Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood performed the abortion but didn’t report the abuse. Criminal. $528 million dollars of taxpayer funds are sent to Planned Parenthood on a yearly basis. Another $612 million dollars of taxpayer funds earmarked for ‘reproductive health services’ go to USAID for abortions abroad.

“Americans have had enough of the excuses and whitewashing of what increasingly looks like an organized crime syndicate hell-bent on selling human baby parts for cash.

“There are 666 Planned Parenthoods in operation, with some states only having only one. In contrast there are 9,069 federally funded Community Health Centers that provide identical services excepting abortion operating in all 50 states. Women don’t need Planned Parenthood; it does not deserve federal funding.” – Mrs. Stacy Washington, Project 21 member and radio talk show host on KFTK in St. Louis.

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over two decades, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank.

Washington, D.C. — Legal and policy experts with the Project 21 black leadership network are available for comment on today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows perceived group racial disparities to be used as a trigger for enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.

“When those statistical differences alone are used as proof of discrimination, freedom and liberty are lost; but worse the constitutional protections provided to every American as an individual are lost too,” said Project 21 co-chairman Horace Cooper, a legal commentator who taught constitutional law at George Mason University and is a former leadership staff member for the U.S. House of Representatives.

“It’s a shame that the majority of justices are willing to allow allegations of discrimination in housing to be painted using a broad brush — sometimes by those who may not even be among the aggrieved — rather than finding and cutting out true instances of abuse with scalpel-like precision,” said Archbishop Council Nedd II, Ph.D., author of multiple books and rector of St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Pine Grove Mills, PA. “The Fair Housing Act was meant to be a scalpel, but the Court has now decided otherwise to our peril. Society is served better by a system that removes specific problems rather than pitting groups against each other.”

On appeal from the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the case of Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, et al. v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc, addressed a festering legal problem regarding the Fair Housing Act’s use to address accusations of disparate racial impact instead of enforcing the law on a case-by-case, as-needed basis as was argued by its supporters when it was debated in Congress.

Specific to this case, the Inclusive Communities Project (ICP) claimed the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, a state agency, violated the federal Fair Housing Act by allocating housing tax credits to developers in a manner that they alleged broadly kept minorities in low-income minority-majority neighborhoods rather than allowing access to housing opportunities in wealthier majority-white communities in the Dallas metropolitan area. ICP charged the department’s tax credit distribution policy creates a disparate impact on black recipients of such credits as a class rather than addressing individual instances of alleged abuse.

Project 21 joined a legal brief submitted to the Court that asked the justices to specifically define the legal scope of the Fair Housing Act. In the brief, it was argued that the Act was written “to apply solely to disparate treatment, not acts having disparate impact on protected classes” and that the U.S. Supreme Court must “consider the threshold question of whether disparate impact claims are even cognizable under the Fair Housing Act” since “disparate impact claims do not depend on the intent of the action or policy.”

This legal brief joined by Project 21 was written and submitted to the Court by the Pacific Legal Foundation and was also joined by the Center for Equal Opportunity, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Individual Rights Foundation and Reason Foundation.

In 2014 and 2015, Project 21 members have already been interviewed or cited by the media over 2,600 times — including TVOne, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Fox News Channel, Westwood One, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, SiriusXM satellite radio and 50,000-watt talk radio stations such as KOA-Denver, WHO-Des Moines, WJR-Detroit, WBZ-Boston and KDKA-Pittsburgh — on issues that include civil rights, entitlement programs, the economy, race preferences, education and corporate social responsibility. Project 21 has participated in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding race preferences and voting rights and defended voter ID laws at the United Nations. Its volunteer members come from all walks of life and are not salaried political professionals.

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over two decades, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org).

Following is Bishop Council Nedd’s Introduction of Presidential Candidate, Sen. Rand Paul

As many of you know, Ascension Day was just this past Thursday and Yesterday was Ascension Sunday. The apostles’ reactions immediately prior to the Ascension tell a significant story. They illustrate with crystal clarity the stubbornness with which we subordinate God’s agenda to our own, and we do this without actually realizing it. In the same way that there was a disconnect between what Christ said and what the Apostles heard… there is a similar disconnect between what our Founding Father intended and how we are interpreting it almost 250 years later.

Christ was focused on servant leadership… While those around him were interested merely in accumulating power.

Shortly you will hear from another great servant leader.

Senator Rand Paul has been a leader since arriving in Washington. He is not a career politician. He is a citizen legislator and surgeon who demonstrates servant leadership regularly when he uses his very little free time to perform free surgical procedures for those in need.

Our nation is at a crossroads.

Will we continue on the path to an ever bigger and more intrusive government?

Or…

…Will we make a U turn and finally begin to restore this nation?

We the people are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. However, that has been warped over the centuries. Governments have no rights. People have rights. Governments have responsibilities that are delegated to them by the people.

Rand Paul will fight to protect the constitution. He will fight to protect the American people. He’s not afraid to speak his mind and we’ll see that demonstrated in the next few days as Washington debates the Patriot Act.

The status quo is not tenable. We have been fooling ourselves too long. As was said right here in this very city in 1776. What we are doing right now is a lot like calling an ox a bull. He is thankful for the distinction, but would much rather have restored what is rightfully his.

Senator Paul can restore this nation to some semblance of what our founders intended, and to what God has blessed for so long.

I have written a book called Does America Hate God? Faith Under Fire. I posed a question to an interesting cross section of people. I asked the question, does America hate God? Following are some of the initial responses.

“… America has forgotten the values it was created on. It has been distorted and manipulated into what certain groups want it to be. We forget that by freedom of religion, it’s that we are not forced into believing one versus another, not the absence of religion or God. America does not hate God, but it is definitely afraid to stand up for Him. Tiptoeing around Him, not having Him in schools or government places, that’s not freedom. And the media certainly does not help. They pick and chose what chaos to report and what not to… And there is so much more…” Dana Tiegen — a mother of three from Marion, Iowa

“No one hates God, they simply cannot see what God has done for them and America doesn’t really differ from other countries, as far as I’m concerned. People everywhere are trying to rely on someone or blame him for their losses. It is often said that Americans are not that religious but through my journey, the people I’ve met, they are as religious as they are kind…” Violet Hejazi — a young Christian Syrian refugee who has settled in Scotland via the UAE, Yemen and Egypt.

“No America doesn’t hate God. That’s just the nonsense that Fox News is peddling. God IS still in public school, our military, etc…” Tamatha Cho — a stay-at-home mother of five and wife of a retired USMC officer from Maryland.

“I first read that as “Does God hate America?” And then I read some responses. No, either way. I don’t think Americans hate God. Unfortunately there are so many Christians who, trying to be tolerant, allow other voices to dominate. Between the agnostics and non-Christians, one might think we are a secular society without regard for God and biblical values. There is still a large Christian sector in this country and we love God. Most of us are praying daily for God to save us and for our leaders to be inspired and guided by God.” Sue MacKinnon — a retired Army nurse from Jacksonville, Florida.